Tuesday, February 12, 2013

IN: The two grandkids' birthdays are only a couple days apart. Since they can't tell time or read a calendar, we can get by with only one birthday party.OUT: Since the live with me, it is reasonable to expect some of my smarts to rub off on them, and they'll (eventually) learn how to read a calendar.

IN: Having said birthday party at the OTHER grandparents' house.OUT: The grandbrats come home with YET MORE noisy toys.

IN: Fisher-Price still makes the corn popper push toy.OUT: They're just as obnoxious as they were 40 years ago.IN: At least it doesn't use batteries.

IN: Hardwood floors so the wheels of corn popper push toy slide instead of roll, resulting in no popping noises.OUT: Grandbrat gets mad at lack of poppage and makes more noise than the toy.

IN: Hilarity of watching Grandbrat the Elder try (and fail, miserably) to vacuum a leaf off the floor using corn popper push toy as if it were a Hoover Upright.OUT: She doesn't have the same enthusiasm for running the real vacuum.

IN: Grandbrat the Younger's walking record so far: 9 steps before flopping buttwise on the floor.OUT: Her nine steps looked just like those of the very drunk driver in that episode of COPS who couldn't pass a field sobriety test.OUT: There's a drunk guy who can't pass a field sobriety test in pretty much every episode of COPS.OUT: Watching COPS.

IN: Years ago, that Saudi guy who used to be my neighbor vigorously explaining how COPS is the #1 show in Saudi Arabia, complete with his staccato "Badda boy, badda boy, what you go to do? What you go to do when come for you" rendition of the theme song.OUT: That I used to have a crazy Saudi neighbor.OUT: Watching COPS

IN: The music made by Fisher-Price toys is much improved over the lame plink-plink music box kind of sound they had when I was a kid. The sax sounds very real, and the guitar sounds just like an old hollow-body electric.OUT: Out of all the buttons on the dang thing, they only ones the grandbrat will push are Rockin' Robin and If You're Happy and You Know It.

Monday, February 4, 2013

The bad news: Texas resident aA hasn't posted anything to his blog in over a year.
The good news: He forwards me a lot of good stuff like this, that I post to my blog for the enjoyment of thousandshundreds dozens of people around the world!

In the news this week, a Southern California man was put under 72-hour psychiatric observation when it was found he owned 100 guns and had (by rough estimate) 1 million rounds of ammunition stored in his home. The house also has a secret escape tunnel.

The television reporter said: "Wow! He has about a million machine gun bullets!" and the headline referred to it as a "massive weapons cache".

By California standards someone owning even 100,000 rounds would be called "mentally unstable".

If he lived elsewhere, such as Arizona, he'd be called "an avid gun collector."

In Oklahoma, he'd be called "a novice gun collector".

In Utah, he'd be called "moderately well prepared", but they'd probably reserve judgment until they made sure that he had a corresponding quantity of stored food.

Saturday, February 2, 2013

Been a rough patch for several Labradoggies among my circle of blogfriends. Thankfully things seem to be looking better. As for mine, she's totally recovered from the pyometra surgery and has been back to her spastic self for a while now.

Speaking of which, the floor plan of our house is a bit odd. The front door is pretty far away from where we park the car. The back door opens to the utility room, and often has laundry or other junk stacked so that it isn't readily used. So we use the sliding glass door as our main access. Mother-in-law was really sick the other day when we left for church so she stayed home, and we left through the sliding door as usual. When we got home, Sunshine went into her overjoyed-freak-out routine where she rears up and paws at the glass door. She managed to hit the little lever and LOCK US OUT.

The front door was installed new when we moved in, and I haven't bothered to get a key for it since we use it so rarely, and my wife didn't even bring her keys. The utility room door was quite impassibly barricaded, as usual, and MiL was so NyQuil-ed out that she couldn't hear us yelling at her to come open the glass door. MiL's bedroom is at the back corner of the house where the landscaping is basically nonexistent, save for MUD and BLACKBERRIES. After a messy and painful slog, I was able to reach her window and bang on it enough to wake her up and get us inside.

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OK, that little tale wasn't very exciting. Maybe this one will be better...

The neighbors with the horses and chickens moved out. There's a pack of coyotes in the area that we've been able to hear sometimes at night. But now that the horses are gone, the coyotes seem to think the neighboring pasture is a great place to assemble and do their little yip-yip song. Last night, from 1:45 to about 2:20 in the morning, that is. Not cool. Noisy obnoxious critters. I'm pretty sure my fence is coyote-proof, but it is a bit unsettling for them to be that close.

I gotta check into the local laws. If I remember right, there's a prohibition on discharging a firearm within X feet of an improved roadway. We're pretty close to the road. But if it turns out that we're far enough away, I'm a gonna shut me up some coyotes!

If we aren't far enough away, ahem, I may have to acquire one of these and do my coyote-silencin' on the sly: